Sad Day in the Whatcott House

Troy doesn't want me to blog about this, but it is a day in the history of our family, and that is why I am doing this blog. So, when you see kids please be sensitive to them.

Our story starts on Saturday. We had been gone all day, and so when we got home we took Zena for a walk. We walked her over to the dog park in our neighborhood so she could get a good run. When we got there, there was a stray dog locked in the park. We felt really bad for the dog. It looked like our Tipper that we lost in the spring, just brown and white instead of black and white. But this was so skinny. You see her ribs, spine, hip bones...it was really sad. Miles kept calling her that sad, lonely dog. We decided that we would go get some food and bring it back to her, and then we ended up bring her home. We thought that we would keep her through the weekend and then call the SPCA on Monday.

We did OK, until Sunday night when Troy and Miles were cleaning out the guinea pig cage. They had the piggies in a basket, and door closed, but one of the boys walked in and that dog grabbed Mater. I didn't get to see it, but Troy said that it all happen so fast he didn't even really get to react to it. I guess it went something like - the dog grabbed Mater, and then Zena jumped on the dog and dropped Mater, then Zena chased the dog downstairs.

The boys say that the piggies are Zena's puppies. It has been really funny to watch Zena with the piggies. She does protect them and likes to keeps to them right by her when they get to play together, so I guess that we where not surprised by her reaction when someone touched her babies. We had got Zena because we wanted to have her to protect our family - I think it extents to our piggies to.

On with our story: Mater ended up dying about 30 minutes later. I think that in the process of being grabbed and dropped his back got broke. It was one of the saddest thing that I have seen. We let the boys all say good-bye to him. There were alot of broken hearts in our family that night.

We told the boys that we would get another one after school on Monday. So, Monday we went to the pet store to get our new piggie. We walk in and they ask how can help us, I said that we are getting a new guinea pig, so if someone could come help us that would be great. We walk over and start looking at them and the boys are all getting excited to get there new pet...it has been a long day waiting for this. What a nightmare!! The girl that was helping us started arguing with me that I could not have two males together. I kept telling her, we have had two males together since Christmas and then I pointed to her cages asking why they could have all their males together. Anyway, this went on for a little while, with me practically on my hands and knees begging to get a piggie. I tried to talk her into letting me get one, and if they started fighting I would return him. No way! She was not going to let me walk out of the store with a piggie.

She ended up going to the Manager, and the manager said that I could only buy a female. I told her I didn't want a female - I wanted a male. Long story short, after about 30 minutes of arguing, three crying kids, I left the store without a guinea pig. I called Troy and told him to go to another store and get us a new guinea pig. His experience at the pet store was a lot better than mine. He got us a little baby male guinea pig that the boys named Jett. He is so cute! Just in case you were wondering...the piggie have not fought. They get along great. We put them together down on the floor and Jett ran right over to Optimus and snuggled up under him, just like Mater used to, and they were both happy.